education neglected. But he
no sooner got rid of his sister and her adviser, Galitzin, than he
seemed to comprehend at once for what he was raised up. The vast
responsibilities of his position pressed upon his mind. To civilize his
country, to make it politically powerful, to raise it in the scale of
nations, to labor for its good rather than for his own private pleasure,
seems to have animated his existence. And this aim he pursued from first
to last, like a giant of destiny, without any regard to losses, or
humiliations, or defeats, or obstacles.

Chance, or destiny, or Providence, threw in his path the very person
whom he needed as a teacher and a Mentor,--a young gentleman from
Geneva, whom historians love to call an adventurer, but who occupied the
post of private secretary to the Danish minister. Aristocratic pedants
call everybody an adventurer who makes his fortune by his genius and his
accomplishments. They called Thomas Becket an adventurer in the time of
Henry II., and Thomas Cromwell in the reign of Henry VIII. The young
secretary to the Danish minister seems to have been a man of remarkable
ability, insight, and powers of fascination, based on his intelligence
and on knowledge acquired in the first instance in a mercantile
house,--as was the success of Thomas Cromwell and Alexander Hamilton.

It was from this young man, whose name was Lefort, whom Peter casually
met at dinner at the house of the Danish envoy, that he was made
acquainted with the superior discipline of the troops of France and
Germany, and the mercantile greatness of Holland and England,--the two
things which he was most anxious to understand; since, as he believed,
on the discipline of an army and the efficiency of a navy the political
greatness of his country must rest. A disciplined army would render
secure the throne of absolutism, and an efficient navy would open and
protect his ports for the encouragement of commerce,--one of the great
sources of national wealth. Without commerce and free intercourse with
other countries no nation could get money; and without money even an
absolute monarch could not reign as he would.

So these two young men took counsel together; and the conviction was
settled in the minds of each that there could be no military discipline
and no efficient military power so long as the Streltzi--those
antiquated and turbulent old guards--could depose and set up monarchs.
They settled it, and with the enthusiasm of y